Killing Floor 3 Review

killing floor 3

We’ve been pretty excited for the next installment of Killing Floor here at Gamer Social Club. I’ve personally put in countless hours on both the first and second game. Not just on one console, but across multiple platforms. I’d max out my characters and move on to the next console to do it all over again. When I say we, I’m speaking of me and Dan Jackson. He was so excited he wrote an amazing article on the evolution the franchise has been through.

Some fans have had their concerns about the game following the Beta test earlier this year. But after its delay, there has been hope for them that Killing Floor 3 could still be everything they had hoped for. I’m going to make sure to address some of these concerns throughout my review of the game.

Gameplay

If you don’t know anything about Killing Floor 3, all you need to know is its a horde mode game. I won’t say zombies because these aren’t your typical zombies. In the game you will be fighting Zed. They are genetically mutated monsters that come in all shapes and sizes.

In Killing Floor 2 you could choose between 3, 7 or 10 waves per match, whichever the player preferred. However, in Killing Floor 3 you will fight your way through 5 waves followed by a boss fight wave every time.

In previous games, the intensity of the hordes slowly increased for the 7 and 10 wave matches. With Killing Floor 3 hosting a lot shorter matches, the intensity of the hordes is quite significant right off the bat. This is a nice switch up from previous entries for the simple factor of the matches being more bite sized. You don’t need to dedicate 30 minutes or more to playing just one match. You can get the full experience in a 20 minutes or less. It extremely fast paced and intense from the second you start to the second you finish.

However the fact that Killing Floor 3 doesn’t offer you the ability to switch the amount of waves you’d like to tackle, means there’s no flexibility. Which sucks if you are looking for a longer experience. This change sticks out like a sore thumb the more you play. At the time of launch, this game only has 8 maps, so you are quickly cycling through these maps.

This can make the game feel like its getting stale. However, its not a huge deal. I say that because of all the features these maps have in them. When choosing your loadout, you will need to take into consideration the map you are on. There are doors you can set traps on, and turrets pre-set in certain locations you can activate with a tool bag. The maps are designed for you to come up with a strategy for survival.

So while on one hand, you might start to feel there isn’t enough maps, finding your strategy, navigating those strategies with different classes, and needing to tweak these plans as the difficulty rises. That is where your replayability is at.

Strategizing your course of action is just the beginning of what you will need to do if you want to survive. You will need to choose what weapon you want to start upgrading, what class you will choose, and how you prefer to mix and match all of their options.

Loadouts

In previous titles Killing Floor served more as a hero shooter in a sense. You chose a class, and that class came with specific guns, tools, and abilities that only that character could use. But because it was the most requested feature given to Tripwire in player feedback after the first Beta, you can now choose a character and access any gun or tool kit you would like to use. Specialty grenades and abilities are still tied to specific characters though.

There are six character classes, Commando, Firebug, Engineer, Sharpshooter, Ninja, and Medic. Below is a list of their abillities and specialty grenades.

CLASS	Ability	Grenade
Commando	Hellion (Drone that shoots projectiles)	HE Grenade (impact grenade)
Firebug	Wildfire (ground slam that sets fire to your surroundings)	Molotov Cocktail
Engineer	Sonic Storm (A power suit with two turrets with sonic projectiles)	Bouncing Betty (trigger-pressured mine)
Sharpshooter	Deaths Hand (A wrist-launcher that fires homing arrows)	Cryo-grenade (freezes enemies)
Ninja	Hebi-Ken (grapple hook that does electric damage on impact)	Caltrop Canister (electric shock that stuns enemies)
Medic	Sanctum (A barrier that heals allies and damages enemies)	Biotic Grenade (a gas grenade that poisons enemies)

When looking at this list, you might struggle to know which one you should pick. I assure you, they are all amazing. You can’t go wrong when choosing one. Its a matter of preference and playstyle.

Every grenade and ability has its own weakness and strength. Even as a medic, you aren’t completely sacrificing doing damage with your ability.

As you level your character up, you can also level up perks and change those perks around to modify your character. I went with the Commando because you can self revive when you max him out. There is also a useful perk where you get huge discounts on ammo and weapons. So I went in with highly decked out weapons early in to missions.

Speaking of decked out weapons, lets talk about how much you can deck your guns out. With all weapons available to you, despite what class you choose, you will be able to mix and match to your heart’s content.

Each weapon has the option to add multiple attachments such as muzzles, mags, and sights. You can also swap out the frames and types of bullets. That’s where you get into the big changes. You can add elemental damage to your weapon with different bullets or you can change the way your gun fires by changing the frame.

Each weapon mod is upgradable. Which enables you to make your gun very powerful. There are 4 tiers of weapons, and after I upgraded my tier 2 weapon high enough, I could solo a boss with it.

You can also add camos, decals, and keychains to style up your gun. You can earn camos and character skins in the Battle Pass. The Season 1 battle pass is much like every other battle pass. Level up, get tokens to unlock 4 items, then you can unlock the big item on that tier. To move on to the next tier, you will need to spend X amount of tokens.

The issue with the battle pass, is that the items in season 1 are nothing to write home about. The big award for reaching the end of the season is a white ninja costume, which is cool, but its probably the only cool thing on there.

The season has mostly blue guns skins, aside from a couple of primarily black skins and then military green skins. Most of the charcter skins are also just different shades of green with the exception of a few. Everyones taste is different, but I have a strong feeling I won’t be alone in this sentiment.

While this isn’t necessarily a problem in and of itself. It becomes a problem when you take in to the fact that season passes are suppose to serve as a motivated to keep players coming back. When I do challenges and unlock more battle pass stuff, I dont get excited and that’s a problem.

The Meat Of It

I’ve gone in depth with you and how much you can customize your loadout throughout this review. Customizing and managing perks, weapons, tools, and characters it where the meat of the game lies.

You will not want to put this game down because you will want to keep maxing out stats and taking your guns to the next level. This is a great thing and I praise the game highly for it.

What is not a great thing, is the hardcore horde mode fans, like myself, might have a hard time coming back to it after some time.

The roadmap Tripwire laid out the characters, maps, and new bosses will be added to the game via free updates.

I’ve already shared my feelings on the map selection earlier in this review. So let me be clear, the amount of maps is not the problem. The problem is with the lack of game modes.

When each match is only 6 waves, the repetitiveness starts to sink in. Making the maps start to feel tiresome. If the matches were longer, they could feel more lived in and not so recycled.

Mixing that issue with the fact that hardcore horde game fans aren’t all here to dip their toe in for a short 6 wave game. Most of us are here to see how long we last in the arena or if we can make it to the ungodly wave of 50.

I’m not saying the new 6 wave model isn’t good. Its a ton of fun and gives you the entire Killing floor 3 experience in a short amount of time. But the challenge to over come the odds is what horde gamers want.

There are three difficulties in this game and weekly missions that will be insanely difficult. But once you’ve conquered that, what’s left for players? Sure you can continue mastering the hardest difficulty with all your characters. But in order to do that you will have to go back to farm the same game mode but on an easier difficulty. Which is quite dull once you’ve experienced the hardest difficulty.

This game could really use a private match setting where you can adjust wave lengths and enemy density. A Classic mode where there is at least 20 waves would also solve the trick. Hell, I’d love to see a survival mode, let’s see how many waves I can make it through.

Addressing Issues

I told you at the beginning of this article I would address some complaints. One of those complaints is Zed time.

Zed time is a slow motion animation that kicks in when you get a headshot.in Killing Floor 1 this was acheived with just getting a headshot. But now In Killing Floor 3, it kicks in once you’ve filled up a bar after getting a certain amount of skill shots.

You can now add speed to this meter by customizing your weapons and perk tree. Yes, it makes the game more difficult, but its a welcome difficulty boost. You have to actually earn your slow motion kills.

As for any other complaints I’ve seen that I’d like to address, that would have to be performance. I reviewed this game on Xbox Series X and had no issues with bugs or glitches. I can’t speak to other platforms.

The last portion of the game I’d like to cover is the music. I’m going to say something that might be considered heresy to some. When I played Doom The Dark Ages, I was a part of the crowd that was disappointed in the soundtrack. It just felt like something was missing. But when I was sweeping down some Zed to the beautiful metal tracks in this game, I thought, “this is what Doom The Dark Ages was missing.”.

To give you a better idea on how I feel about the soundtrack, Doom The Dark Ages 6/10, Killing Floor 3 8/10, and Doom Eternal I would consider to have a 10/10 soundtrack.

Summary

Compared to Killing Floor 2, Killing Floor 3 is a step up. The amount of customization at your disposal will make you want to see what every gun is truly capable of. The new skills characters have are so fun and make the player feel powerful, no matter the class you choose. Blasting Zeds while listening to metal has never been better.